GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 480, which has core clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 924 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 480 SPUs along with 60 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (75%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 114048 (180%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (approximately 71%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17376 (71%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is a lot (about 227%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23340 (227%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.